Leadership Development

We partner with you to help your organization's leaders transform their mindset and behaviors

Our leadership development offerings are designed to equip leaders with the knowledge and tools to shape culture and cultivate performance within their organizations. Our leadership development solutions initiate and sustain individual behavior change to drive organizational adaptability.

Through its process of academic research, empirical experience, and validation with clients, McChrystal Group maintains an edge on the science and experience of leadership development, synthesizing that understanding into a practical offering that equips leaders with the skills needed to successfully navigate a complex environment, to include:

Connecting

Constant Learning

Decision-Making

Discipline

Effective Communication

In addition, we work with leaders to understand key elements within the behavioral science and psychology of leading high-performing teams and complex organizations, to include:

Authority

Autonomy

Accountability

Psychological Safety

Together, these skills enable today’s leaders to adapt, drive creation, sustain a team of teams approach, and effectively leverage organizational processes. A deep understanding of these skills and demonstrated application builds individual adaptability and high-performing teams.

Through educational courses, cultural initiatives, and team building programs, we partner with you to reshape how your organization approaches leadership. From focused workshops to targeted training sessions, our leadership development solutions focus on building these individual leadership skills, employing the “leading like a gardener” approach outlined in Team of Teams in order to prepare senior leaders for the shift in behaviors that will be required to succeed in today’s dynamic environment.

Backstory

Watching the environment shift beneath his very feet as commander, General McChrystal came to view effective leadership in the new environment as more akin to gardening than chess.

Through trial and error, he found that the primary responsibility of leading an adaptable organization in the 21st century was creating and maintaining a collaborative ecosystem where an organization can thrive.

Leading like a gardener entails nurturing the organization’s structure, processes, and culture—all to enable the subordinate teams and individual players to function effectively under proper guidance from the top. A gardening approach to leadership requires an “eyes on, hands-off” mentality in which the senior leader sees the broader environment and connects the dots between teams, creating and maintaining a collaborative ecosystem for the organization to thrive in.

Through changing his personal leadership behaviors, General McChrystal created a learning and agile organization. Sharing context and empowering others to act created a powerful team of teams that could match anything that the environment threw at them—without running every decision up the chain of command for those at the top to decide.

Corporate leaders must face this transition as well. And in the private sector, failure to empower those below has serious consequences. Engagement and productivity are driven down, regrettable attrition rises, innovation stalls, and culture suffers.

State of Leadership

A 2013 Gallup study revealed that only 30 percent of US workers are engaged in their work, and a full 18 percent are actively disengaged. A follow-up report compiled research on 192 companies and found that employers with the most engaged employees were 22% more profitable than those with the least engaged employees.

A Harvard Business Review study in 2014 found that people who said leaders treated them with respect were 55 percent more engaged. But 54 percent of employees claimed that they didn’t regularly get respect from their leaders.

In an Accenture survey, 31 percent of those seeking new jobs cited a lack of empowerment as the motivating factor.

In a 2015 study, Deloitte found that only 40 percent of respondents rated their organizations as “ready” or “very ready” in learning and development in 2015. The same survey found that only 6 percent of companies feel fully ready to address their leadership issues.

We aim to help organizations tackle these leadership challenges in order to help businesses increase engagement, improve productivity, and drive value. Our offerings are inspired by the leadership lessons learned from forging an adaptable team of teams, and they are designed to mold business leaders that can drive organizational success in the 21st century.

Our Approach

Without constant diligence, dispersed teams can easily fall into bad habits—silos, information hoarding, and negative behavior can seep in between the seams.

Leaders have the position to drive the operating structure, transparency, and cross-functional connectivity needed to solve problems as a team of teams.

You also have the heavy responsibility of shaping the culture and demanding the ongoing conversation that maintains this organizational transformation.

Leaders are also responsible for cultivating the next generation of talent, developing and growing the leaders who will take over in the future.

Our offerings are designed to equip leaders with the tools to fulfill all of these responsibilities. Our solutions train and maintain individual behaviors that drive organizational adaptability, enabling individuals to lead like gardeners.

Through educational courses, coaching and mentoring, cultural initiatives, and team building programs, we partner with you to reshape how your organization approaches leadership.

Overview of Solutions

Our custom-tailored offerings focus heavily on training senior leaders and key influencers within your company to ensure a strong foundation for individual behaviors that sustain organizational change. This can include coaching and mentoring and educational team-building courses or off-sites.

Training sessions

1-3 day sessions or off-sites, with educational, cultural, and team building components, focused on the leadership skills that drive adaptability.

Leadership development program

A customized program designed to train and develop your organization’s leaders.

Coaching and mentoring

Targeted individual coaching or mentoring sessions and relationships led by one of our team’s trained coaches or experienced mentors, designed to improve behaviors and influence effective leaders.

Results

We have run countless leadership training sessions, offsites, and team-building events, with clients ranging from technology hardware providers to a financial services firm to a major apparel brand.

Our leadership offerings are designed to affect real change in culture, team dynamics, and behaviors. Here is a sample of our results and testimonials:

“They have given us the courage to prioritize behavior over outcomes. This mindset will ultimately enable us to drive much greater results for our clients.”

– A senior leader from a large, global bank

“Their training sessions were fantastic and inspiring for anyone in leadership roles at any level.”

– A training course participant, from a financial services client

“They are capable people who have worked in very difficult situations and they engage quickly and deeply on a personal level.”

More Information

Senior leader of a major division within a hardware technology company

These guys understand leadership in fast-paced, challenging environments. But there’s this concept of courage. To lead and exemplify it, and they know how to communicate those capabilities and bring them out in others.

– Senior leader of a major division within a hardware technology company

Order your copy of One Mission at your local bookseller or online:

Interested in purchasing copies of ONE MISSION for your team? We’re offering exclusive bonus offers – including signed bookplates and a private video white boarding session with author Chris Fussell – if you order 25+ copies. Email [email protected] for more info.